Article by article, how Big Tech shaped the EU's roll-back of digital rights

Summary

At the end of November 2025, Ursula von der Leyen gave Trump and his tech oligarchs an early Christmas present: an unprecedented attack on digital rights. In its so-called Digital Omnibus, the European Commission proposed weakening important rules designed to protect us from Big Tech’s abuses of power. These are the protections that keep everyone's data safe, governments and companies accountable, protect people from having artificial intelligence (AI) systems decide their life opportunities, and ultimately keep our societies free from unchecked surveillance. At the same time, the Digital Omnibus is part of the European Commission's deregulation agenda, which threatens key social and environmental standards in Europe. Ironically this deregulation agenda is being promoted by the Commission as a way to make the EU 'competitive' – despite in reality actively empowering US Big Tech companies that dominate the field. The Digital Omnibus was immediately heavily criticised by numerous civil society organisations. Politico even called it the end of the ‘Brussels effect’ – that is, that European tech regulations are adopted in other countries – and wrote that “Washington is [now] setting the pace on deregulation in Europe.” To show the extent of Big Tech’s influence on the Digital Omnibus, we compared the Commission’s proposals with the lobbying positions from Big Tech and its associations. The proposals in the Digital Omnibus concern both data protection and rules for AI. While the EU mistakenly speaks of benefits for European corporations, it is clear that weak digital rules strengthen the power of Google, Microsoft, Meta etc, thereby jeopardising the goal of becoming more independent from Big Tech and the US. In the past, Big Tech has repeatedly spread the one-sided lobbying message that data protection hinders economic growth and innovation, especially with regard to AI. This includes exceptions for SMEs and a fundamental focus on making more use of data instead of prote...